This week, we’re releasing Reflectivity 12.6.0, an exciting step forward in helping schools transform coaching and professional development programs into holistic reflection programs.

Reflectivity guides teachers to deeper levels of thought through video and written reflection, feedback and discussion, and thoughtful planning about next steps in the reflection cycle.

It all happens through Reflectvity’s engaging and motivating collaborative reflection experience. 

Reflect in Groups

Groups foster frequent, open-ended, and social reflection among peers, coaches, and mentors. Creating a group is easy. Anyone with access to Reflectivity can do it. 

Groups have flexible settings for membership and content, making them a powerful way to bring more support, feedback and connection to professional learning workflows. For example:

• Coaching: A coach can have 1:1 conversations with specific teachers, and view these private interactions in one convenient, easy-to-access space. 

• New teachers: Invite new teachers to a private group where they can share their experiences. Together, group members can celebrate wins, empathize with struggles, and brainstorm solutions.

• Support initiatives: Create a group open to your whole team, department, or grade level. This is a powerful way to reflect together on new technology or curriculum. 

With a space to reflect and connect at any time, Groups empower you to make your existing professional learning more dynamic, ongoing, and collaborative.

A flexible reflection experience

Reflection looks different for everyone, but educators consistently include three key pieces: evidence, thinking, and plans. 

With Reflectivity’s new reflection experience, inspired by the 4Fs Framework, you can reflect with the level of depth that’s right for your situation and needs. 

• Evidence: Upload a video or URL as evidence begin a conversation with a coach, colleague, or mentor about your experience. 

• Thinking: Reflect in writing to share your findings, and name the feelings you have about your experience. 

• Plans: Keep the reflection cycle going by planning for the future step of your learning. 

Each reflection includes a discussion section where you can share resources, receive feedback, or coordinate logistics about your work.

Go deeper with Skills

As your team builds a reflection routine around reflecting in Groups, Reflectivity helps you reap individual and organizational benefits. 

By adding Skills to a reflection, teachers can share more context about their work and focus more specifically on one area of their practice. When new Skills are added to a reflection, a new Group is created. Other teachers can discover this Skill Group via any reflection that includes it, helping new Groups to grow organically.

This way, Groups in Reflectivity are a dynamic, live look at your organization’s professional learning priorities. 

Beyond video to holistic reflection

Reflectivity still has all the powerful features you need to reflect and share feedback on instructional videos. 

But what if every teacher on your team regularly reflected on progress and exchanged feedback with colleagues? What improvements to student outcomes would you see if your teachers were developing to their fullest potential?  How much more adaptable could your organization be? 

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Reflectivity’s latest release helps teachers become more adaptable by socializing reflection. 

Socializing reflection means sharing your learning process in a community of colleagues with similar challenges and goals. 

When you share your work with colleagues and exchange ideas about skills you’re building, you gain the insights and feedback needed to adapt to any challenge. This leads to stronger connections, new skills, and an even higher order of thinking. 

This release makes that process easier and more powerful than ever.

Explore colleagues’ learning

We noticed that users love seeing a “zoomed out” view of their Skill communities because it gives a birds-eye view of the reflection happening in their organization.

Now, the My Skills, Most Active, and New tabs keep you focused on the activity happening in your organization’s Skill communities. You’ll always know where colleagues are gathering to make progress on hard problems, and where new ideas are emerging about the latest challenges the organization faces.

When time is limited, it only takes a few moments to browse a Skill community, encourage colleagues, or get inspired by their reflections.

Socialize reflection at every step

Top-down professional learning often makes it difficult for teachers to connect around common challenges, and exchange ideas about shared goals.

Now, Reflectivity gives you a visual reminder that you’re part of a community of reflective educators, sharing what’s working in real time. We’ve done this by moving all interactions and reflections to the right panel, so you stay in the community as you work.

Additionally, each step of the skill-building process is now an act of reflection shared in your Skill community. These steps include joining a new Skill community, making plans, and engaging in deeper written or video reflections. Your colleagues can encourage you at each step with a Boost, or leave a comment to start a discussion.

When your organization socializes reflection inside a Skill community, learning happens with the support of others.

Adaptable educators reflect together 

Teachers face more change, at a faster pace, than ever before. This is a modern problem that requires a modern solution. Traditional, top-down professional learning moves too slow to keep up. 

Instead, teachers need the freedom to explore many solutions for challenges they face. And they need a dynamic community where they can exchange ideas and feedback by socializing reflection. 

Reflectivity’s latest release makes this new vision of professional learning possible. Imagine what it’d look like if your organization became a community of adaptable educators reflecting together.

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After working with PD and coaching programs for over a decade, we’ve seen the power of collaboration. Whether it’s a PLC or conversation during prep, there’s magic in exploring ideas together.

But collaboration is often limited by location and schedule. Without the time and place, educators miss opportunities to learn from each other.

Today’s release addresses this challenge. We’re giving teachers a look into each other’s work, making it easier to connect around shared topics. 

Build skills and boost motivation – together

Each topic in Reflectivity is now a community. In topic communities, you can see updates about the work your colleagues are doing.

Topic communities are where educators can connect with colleagues down the hall or on the other side of town. They’re where educators gather to explore new solutions to shared challenges. 

By seeing others’ progress, you’ll feel more inspired to take your own next steps.

A familiar interface with new possibilities

You can stay connected with your topic communities in two familiar ways. 

1. Filter the Community board (previously the Advancing board) by topics you’ve joined. 

This gives you a quick way to see progress your colleagues have made on the topics you care about. You can then encourage those colleagues with a boost.

2. You can view detailed activity about any topic. 

Sometimes you want a more granular look at the work your colleagues are doing. For example, you may want to read all reflections written by colleagues about a topic.

Making space for radical collaboration

In an age of change powered by AI, top-down PD no longer works. 

As Swivl CEO Brian Lamb recently wrote,“professional development needs to look less like traditional training and a heck of a lot more like creative design projects.“

Reflectivity aims to inspire the radical collaboration that makes the design process effective. Through this approach, educators can build connections, learn skills, and adapt to any challenge.

If you are an existing Reflectivity user, explore these new features on web and mobile. You can also read more about Reflectivity here.

If you don’t have access to Reflectivity, say hello to Reflectivity Kits! Reflectivity Kits are a fun, social way to reflect together and build upon each other’s energy during an event.

Educators around the country use Reflectivity Kits to capture learnings during PD Days, new teacher trainings, Ed Camps, summer sessions, cross-curricular PLCs, district wide conferences, and to help set professional learning goals.

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Ask teachers if they reflect, and nearly 100% will say yes.

For many, this reflection happens through an informal web of internal dialogue, sticky notes, and casual conversations.

But when professional learning initiatives ask (or require) teachers to reflect, the external pressure can make the task feel daunting.

• Where should I start? 
• What should I reflect on?
• Should I discuss my strengths? Weaknesses? Both? 
• How in depth should I go?

The stress of how to reflect can outweigh the benefits of the act and reduce its value.

Fortunately, Swivl has built Reflectivity to offer teachers a flexible answer to the questions above.

Reflectivity (formerly Swivl Teams) makes reflection a simple yet engaging way to share ideas and get feedback. The reflection experience in Reflectivity is inspired by the 4Fs Framework, developed by Dr. Roger Greenaway.

Because Reflectivity’s reflection experience includes both flexibility and structure, teachers gain the autonomy and support needed for a successful reflection routine.

Fact:

What happened?

Findings:

What did you realize?

Feelings:

How did it make you feel?

Future:

What are next steps?

The 4Fs are built in to Reflectivity to help you reflect with purpose

Each step of the 4Fs is integrated into the design of Reflectivity’s reflection experience. First, teachers can identify their feelings by selecting a word that best matches their current state. Then, they can then dig deeper into the facts of their recent experiences, and their findings about those events. Lastly, teachers can make a plan for the next step in the future of their reflection process.

Fact:

What Happened?

What exactly happened? What were all the steps you saw or remember happening, in order. Do not think about the emotions or the behaviors.

Findings:

What Did You Realize?

Are you able to make any conclusions from the event that you reflected on? What were the cause and effect moments?

Feelings:

How Did You Feel?

Now is the time to think about your emotions. Did your emotions play any role, positive or negative, into the event? Did your emotions indicate to you that something you planned should have changed?

Future:

What are your plans for next steps?

Based on what you learned from noticing what happened, some conclusions you made, and how you felt throughout the whole process, how can you either recreate or improve what was done and reflected on?

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With our first release of Reflectivity in March, our goal was to help users gain energy and inspiration by displaying the new and popular topics colleagues are working on. 

Since then, we’ve heard from users that reflecting and discussing those topics is a top priority. 

We’re excited to announce several new features that deliver on the second half of Reflectivity’s promise: reflection and growth.

Better tools for reflection allow users to examine their thinking about a topic and review the work they’ve done. When educators in an organization are reflecting regularly, they build a body of knowledge that facilitates learning and collaboration.

It’s rare for teachers to have one place to track their thinking about important topics. It’s even less common for teachers to easily share reflections, so they can learn from and with colleagues. 

Todays’ release makes this all a possibility. Users can now enjoy significantly enhanced reflection capabilities, including: 

• Write multiple reflections about a topic 
• Read all reflections from colleagues in one place 
• Publish reflections to an organization

And more, which we’ll outline below. We’ll start with a better experience for selecting topics users may want to work on.

Understand the work happening in an organization

Teachers often feel siloed and unsupported. However, when users begin exploring a new topic, knowing that colleagues are also working on this topic can be energizing.

With this in mind, we’re now showing more information about the topics colleagues are working on. Clicking on any individual topic from the new or popular board now shows information about the number of reflections colleagues have created about this topic, how many of those reflections are visible to a user, and a list of the colleagues working on the topic. 

By reading others’ reflections, users can gain the knowledge and energy needed to begin working on this topic. By seeing the colleagues already working on a topic, users have a better sense of who they can collaborate with.

Track the evolution of your work on a topic

By writing multiple reflections on a topic, users can document their thinking over time to more clearly see how they’ve solved problems, adjusted their perspective, and improved their practice.

Writing a series of reflections on a topic can help users uncover areas to explore with a coach, communicate growth to mentors or administrators, or track progress for future reference.

Share insights, wins and questions with your organization

Many teachers regularly share their thinking with PLCs, grade level teams, or other smaller groups. However, certain instances call for sharing ideas with an entire school or district. To help facilitate this, users can now publish reflections to their entire organization.  

Publishing reflections to the organization allows users to celebrate wins, request help from their community, or share new insights about common challenges. Users may even use publishing to the organization to gain added accountability for their work.

Publishing a reflection takes vulnerability. It’s important to note that it’s always optional for a user to publish their reflection with their organization, and it can easily be undone. 

We’re excited to see how published reflections and the discussions around them can help build trust and spread good ideas within an organization. 

Learn from and with colleagues 

It’s now fast and easy for a user to view all the reflections visible to them, whether those have been directly shared, or they’ve been published to the whole organization. By sort reflections by topic, date, and whether or not they include video, users can tap into organizational knowledge built by their colleagues. 

For example, imagine you are beginning to integrate social-emotional learning into your classroom. With a few clicks, you can read all reflections your colleagues have posted about this topic. You can then begin working on this topic, starting from a foundation of knowledge gleaned from your colleagues’ experiences.

Collaborate with colleagues who share your interests

It’s now easier for users to view reflections shared with them and participate in discussions through filtering reflections by discussions. This shows users all reflections that are shared with them, new comments on any reflections they’ve shared, and new comments on any reflections they’ve previously discussed.

By putting these all in one place, users can quickly see the latest updates on the work they’re doing with colleagues.

Reflection and collaboration make growth inevitable

With these new updates, we’re excited to see how educators can gain even more energy by having better insight into their colleagues’ work. Through writing, reading, sharing, and discussing the most important topics to you and your organization, you’ll take valuable steps towards building trust, sharing good ideas, and improving your practice.

After you try these features, we’d love to hear you feedback. Share your feedback with us by emailing success@swivl.com, or mention us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/swivl.

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Over a decade, we’ve supported thousands of school initiatives, impacting 100,000+ teachers. 

Through it all, we’ve seen two challenges deter individual and organizational growth. 

First, educators are often asked to absorb too many ideas from top-down initiatives. In response, they deflect these new ideas, i.e. block them out. It’s a rational decision to conserve energy for their daily work. 

Second, bold exploration of new ideas often remains siloed, not shared across organizations.

On the other hand, magic happens when educators can identify and work on topics they care about. Focus and ownership energize teachers to face hard problems. When schools help colleagues learn from each others’ work, the effect is even greater. 

But teachers, coaches, and administrators know that this is a resource-intensive logistical nightmare. Until now.

Along with a new name, Reflectivity brings an exciting expansion to what we’ve already built with our hardware and software, but addresses the new problems we see educators face.

Reflectivity brings focus and clarity to educators’ work

Reflectivity includes all of our existing software’s features for deep written and video-based reflection. However, we’ve added a simple, energizing new way for educators to bring meta-cognition to their work. This process starts with educators identifying the Topic they’re working on, and describing their State. 

Why Topic and State? Reflection is powerful and necessary for professional growth. Video reflection, especially paired with coaching, may be its most effective form. But this deeper form of reflection is too rare to lead to improvement. 

Starting with reflection in its simplest form addresses this problem. 

With a few clicks, teachers gain clarity by identifying where they want to put their energy. When priorities or feelings change, updating Topics and States takes a minute or less. With more awareness brought to the daily work, reflecting more deeply becomes less daunting.

Educators share their topics with their organization, creating the energizing effect of Reflectivity Boards. This is the biggest and most impactful experience we are introducing.

Reflectivity Boards energize and inspire your organization

Reflectivity Boards give educators energy through a real-time, dynamic display of what your colleagues are working on. 

There are two Reflectivity Boards, each with its own purpose:

• New: Topics colleagues have recently added, i.e. started working on
• Popular: Topics that – you guessed it – are worked on by the most people in the organization

Reflectivity Boards give educators a view into how topics are developing in their organization. It is a visual rendering of where colleagues are putting their energy and improving their practice. 

By viewing the Boards frequently, educators can build excitement about the topics they may want to work on, and can discover new topics to explore on their own or with colleagues. Soon, the Reflectivity Boards will help educators connect with like-minded colleagues to collaborate and explore deeper thinking on a topic. 

Tools for deeper, more purposeful reflection

After educators have added topics and begun working on them, they can continue to reflect in ways that grow deeper over time.

• Refining Topics: Maybe it’s time to leave a topic behind in place of a new one that is more relevant to an educator’s circumstances. A topic can quickly be moved to the Backlog, where it is saved and can be reactivated later with just a click. 
• Written Reflection: After a lesson, conversation, or other learning experience, educators can reflect in writing to capture their thinking about a topic.
• Video Evidence: As part of a coaching program or to deepen one’s own reflections, educators can record or upload video evidence using our existing hardware and software tools.

We see many possibilities for expanding how educators and administrators interact with these reflections. Imagine giving educators a view into the deeper work happening on a given topic across their organization? What if administrators and coaches could have a real-time understanding of the topics their teachers needed the most support on, or were most excited to work on? This, and more, is what we’re excited to explore.

Experience Reflectivity in your organization

Adopting the name Reflectivity signals a renewed commitment to our identity as a reflective tools company focused on solving education’s most pressing problems. 

We’re excited to see how educators use Reflectivity to gain increased focus, motivation, and collaboration in their work by exchanging ideas and sharing their energy. And they can do it all while continuing to engage in deep video and written reflection when the time is right.

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